Killer Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  Benedict finished his impromptu statement for the media and began selecting uniforms for the door-to-door witness search. I went to pitch in. It boosted morale for the men to see their Lieut pounding pavement with them, especially since it was probably futile in this instance.

  The killer had dumped a body in a public place, where it was sure to be found. But he'd done it without attracting any attention.

  I had a feeling this was only the beginning.

  Chapter 2

  Morning. The stale sweat that clung to me and the sour taste of old coffee grounds were constant reminders that I hadn't slept yet.

  As if I needed reminders. I have chronic insomnia. My last sound sleep was sometime during the Reagan Administration, and it shows. At forty-six my auburn hair is streaked with gray that grows faster than I can dye it, the lines on my face shout age rather than character, and even two bottles of Visine a month couldn't get all the red out.

  But the lack of sleep has made me pretty damn productive.

  Spread out before me on my cluttered desk, a dead woman's life had been reduced to a collection of files and reports. I was combining all the information into a report of my own. It read like a test, with none of the blanks filled in.

  Twelve hours had passed and we still didn't know the victim's name.

  No prints or hairs or fibers on the body. No skin under the fingernails. Nothing solid in the door-to-door reports. But this lack of evidence was evidence in itself. The perp had been extremely careful.

  The victim wasn't sexually assaulted, and death had resulted from suffocation induced by a broken windpipe, as Max had guessed. The lesion around her neck was six millimeters thick. It didn't leave fibers, which would indicate rope, and didn't bite into the skin, which would imply a thin wire. The coroner suggested an electrical cord as a possible weapon.

  Ligature marks around her wrists and ankles bore traces of twine. Staking out every store in Illinois that sold twine wasn't too clever an idea, though it was mentioned.

  The stab wounds were post-mortem and made by a thick bladed knife with a serrated back. There were twenty-seven wounds in all, of varying depth and size.

  We were unable to pull any fingerprints from the garbage can Jane Doe was found in. Even Mike Donovan's prints had been washed away by the rain. The contents of the can were an average assortment of convenience store garbage, except for one major item.

  Mixed in with the wrappers and cups was a five-inch gingerbread man cookie. It was heavily varnished, like an old loaf of lacquered French bread that gourmet restaurants use for decoration. An elite task force of two people was assigned to Chicago's hundred-plus bakeries to try and get a match. If they failed, there were an equal number of supermarkets that sold baked goods. Double that figure to include the neighboring suburbs. A huge job, all for nothing if it was homemade.

  If this wasn't such a somber situation, the image of two detectives flashing around the picture of gingerbread man and asking, “Have you seen him?” would be a pretty funny image.

  I took another sip of some coffee that the Gestapo could have used for difficult interrogations and felt it bleed into my stomach, which didn't approve. The caffeine surging through my veins left me nauseous and jittery. I gave my temples ten seconds of intense finger massage, and then went back to my report.

  She was killed roughly three hours before Donovan discovered her body at 8:55. Depending on how much time the perp spent with her corpse, he could have killed her anywhere within a hundred mile-radius. That narrowed it down to about four million people. Take out women, children, the elderly, everyone with a solid alibi, and the twenty percent of the population who were left- handed, and I figured we had only about seven hundred thousand suspects left.

  So we were making progress.

  Pressure from the Mayor's Office forced us to involve the Feebies. They were sending up two agents from Quantico, special operatives in the Behavioral Science Unit. Captain Bains played up the technical end, extolling the virtues of their nationwide crime web, which would be able to match this murder up with similar ones from around the country. But in reality he disliked the Feds as much as I did.

  Cops were fiercely territorial about their jurisdictions, and hated to have them trampled on. Especially by bureaucratic robots who were more concerned with procedure than results.

  I went for another sip of coffee, but it was mercifully empty.

  Maybe one of the leads would pan out. Maybe someone would identify the Jane Doe. Maybe the Feds and their super crime- busting computer would solve the case moments after they arrived.

  But a feeling in my gut that wasn't entirely coffee-related told me that before we made any real progress, the Gingerbread Man would kill again.

  He'd done too much planning to make this a one-time-only event.

  Herb walked into my office, carrying an aromatic cup of hot Dunkin' Donuts coffee, a dark roast by the smell of it. But the way he poured it greedily down his throat made it apparent he hadn't brought it for me.

  “Got the serum tests.” He dropped a report on my desk. “Traces of sodium secobarbital found in her urine.”

  “Seconal?”

  “You've heard of it?”

  I nodded. I'd researched every insomnia remedy going back to Moses. “I've read about it. Went out of vogue when Valium came around, which went out of vogue with Halcion and Dalmane.”

  I hadn't ever tried Seconal, but had given the others a shot. The depression they caused was worse than the sleepless nights. My doctor had offered to prescribe Prozac to combat the depression, but I didn't want to go down that slippery slope.

  “Needle puncture on the upper arm was the entry point. Coroner said two ccs would put a hundred-and-fifty pound person under in just a few seconds.”

  “Is Seconal prescribed anymore?”

  “Not much. But we caught a break. Only hospital pharmacies carry injectionals. Because it's a Control 3 class drug, every order has to be sent to the Illinois Department of Professional Regulations. I got a list of all recent orders. Only a dozen or so.”

  “Also check for thefts from hospitals and manufacturers.”

  Benedict nodded, finishing his coffee. “You look like a bowl of crap, Jack.”

  “That's the poet in you, fighting to get out.”

  “You keep pulling all-nighters and Don is going to hit the bricks.”

  Don. I'd forgotten to call him and tell him I was staying late. Hopefully he'd forgive me. Again.

  “Why don't you go home, get some rest.”

  “Not a bad plan, if I could.”

  My partner frowned. “Then go spend some time with your gentleman friend. Bernice is constantly on me about working too much, and you're here twenty hours a week more than I am. I don't see how Don puts up with it.”

  I met Don in a YMCA kickboxing class about a year ago. The instructor paired us up for sparring. I knocked him down with a snap-punch, and he asked me out. After six months of dating, Don’s apartment lease ran out, and I invited him to move in-- a bold move for a commitaphobe like me.

  Don was the polar-opposite of me in the looks department; blonde, tan, with deep blue eyes and thick lips that I would kill for. I took after my mother. Not only were we both five feet, six inches tall, with dark brown eyes, dark hair, and high cheekbones, but she was a retired Chicago cop.

  When I was twelve, my mother taught me the two skills essential to my adult life; how to use a liner pencil to make my thin lips look fuller, and how group my shots from forty-feet away with a .38.

  Unfortunately, Mom relayed very little information when it came to the care and feeding of a boyfriend.

  “Don goes out a lot,” I admitted. “I haven't seen him in a couple of days.”

  I closed my eyes, fatigue working slender fingers through my hair and down my back. Maybe going home would be a good idea.

  I could pick up some wine, take Don out to a nice lunch. We could try to openly communicate and work out the problems we'd been avoidin
g. Maybe I'd even score, as Mike Donovan had put it.

  “Fine.” My eyes snapped open, and I felt a surge of enthusiasm. “I'm going. You'll call if anything shakes loose?”

  “Of course. When do the Feebies show?”

  “Tomorrow, noonish. I'll be here.”

  We nodded our good-byes, and I stretched my cramped body out of my chair and went to go make a sincere effort with the man I was living with.

  After all, the day could only get better.

  Or so I thought.